


The Trials and Tribulations of High King Margo (Long May She Reign)

by Monstrous_Femme



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/F, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 04:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrous_Femme/pseuds/Monstrous_Femme
Summary: Upon her return to Fillory as High King, Margo learns about some fine print from the magically binding contract that promised Fen in marriage to the High King of Fillory.





	The Trials and Tribulations of High King Margo (Long May She Reign)

“Those sons of bitches,” Margo said. She paced around her bedchamber, footsteps speeding up in time with her heart rate. “Those dirty motherfucking sons of bitches.”

“Are you referring to your cabinet, or your friends who made a deal with my grandfather without paying enough attention to what the deal was?” Fen asked. She was sitting on the one chair in the room, and would have looked calm if it weren’t for her fingers, which were drumming on the arms of the chair.

This must be terrible for her, being forced into marriage with the woman who had traded away her baby to the fairies. Margo pushed away this thought as forcefully as she could. “I think I’ve got enough curse words to go around,” she said, turning to face Fen. “How the hell are you still so calm?”

“Honestly, after everything else that’s happened over the past year, I’m not sure a new marriage is enough to phase me anymore. The important thing is that magic’s back, right? We can figure out the rest.”

Right. Magic was back, and she was High Fucking King, and they’d stopped the library from putting a siphon on all of magic. There was more good than bad. She was Margo, she was fabulous, and they would figure it out. She’d have preferred to figure it out with Eliot helping out, but if he wanted an extended vacation on earth after everything that had happened, so be it.

She was Margo. She could find her own way through.

Even if she _had_ stood by Eliot’s side the whole time he was King, and really, what was it with men and never thinking to thank her for her contribution to their success?

“Besides,” Fen added when it became clear that Margo wasn’t saying anything, “This can’t be more uncomfortable than my marriage to Eliot, right?”

Margo laughed. “Sweetie,” she said, taking a few steps toward Fen so she could look her in the eye. “I’m going to be a better husband to you than Eliot was in every way imaginable.”

*

Three nights into her marriage, Margo was seriously considering climbing out the fucking window.

Not that it was all bad. In fact, Margo felt very safe in saying that there was more good than bad. The day after she married Fen she’d found out that the same shift in power that had forced her into this marriage annulled her previous one. She may not have wanted to marry Fen, but at least her partner was an _adult,_ and one she respected more than most.

But that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t sleep with another person this close to her in bed.

Margo’s heart moved in strange ways, racing at some moments and slowing the next. Every time she tried to shift around was a reminder that she wasn’t alone. 

She had never shared a bed with anyone besides Eliot, except for the night she and him and Quentin had all fallen asleep in a heap. But at least that time, she’d been too fucked up on emotions to notice. Margo had never had to spent night after night sober and in the same bed as another human being. Even her long-term boyfriends and girlfriends had been allowed to fuck her, and then asked to kindly fuck off to the couch so that she could get some sleep.

_Shouldn’t the High King of Fillory get more than one bed?_ she thought. But then, she’d have to ask Rafe or someone, and if the answer was no she’d be showing what she didn’t know in front of her council. Power was everything. She couldn’t give it up just because it was _fucking impossible to sleep_ with someone next to her.

Fen snored, and Margo wrapped her share of the blanket more tightly around herself. Cold air seeped into the blanket through the crack between their bodies. Margo couldn’t get warm.

Tomorrow, she’d have to wake up and keep on being High King, no matter how little sleep she got tonight.

*

If clocks had been a regular feature of Fillory and not just some weird flight of fancy from Jane, one would be ticking right now, counting all of the wasted seconds of Margo’s life as she sat in this cabinet meeting. “We done?” she asked after what had to have been hours. All that time on Earth spent trying to escape the boredom of adulthood, and now she was the rule of a fucking fantasy kingdom and as it turned out, that meant hour upon hour discussing boring adulthood things like taxes. She just couldn’t win.

“Actually, there is one more item to address,” said a nervous-looking Fillorian whose name Margo was pretty sure was Uella. Margo stared at her expectantly, but she did not continue her sentence. 

“Well, is anyone gonna tell me what’s going on, or do I have to guess?” Margo asked. She put her hands on her hips in her favorite power pose (hey, she’d watched the TED Talk, she knew what she was doing) and waited for an answer from her cabinet. They seemed a little bit scared of her. _Fucking wusses._

Just when Margo was despairing of ever getting an answer, Rafe spoke up.

“It’s Julia’s magic, Your Majesty,” he said earnestly. “Without her presence, the things she fixed seem to be—well, unfixing themselves.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“The trees in the One-Way Forest are dying,” he explained. “We’ve received word that they show signs of fire damage. We are worried that this means Julia’s magic is no longer active, and that other things she fixed might turn back in similar ways.”

Margo’s brain reeled through all of things Julia had done during the campaign for High King—the food she’d grown, the well she’d fixed, and all of the other minor mendings along the way—and what would happen if those things reverted to how they’d been.

She looked around the room, full of people with identical grave expressions on their faces. _If only Eliot were here,_ she thought, and then silenced the thought at once. Margo was High King, not him. She could fix this. 

She opened her mouth to say something inspiring, or maybe the first step in a brilliant plan, but all that came out were the words, “Well, fuck.”

*

The problem wasn’t Fen, it was the bed. It was too hard and unforgiving. Call Margo a spoiled princess if you want, but she was used to spring mattresses, not whatever hay-filled bullshit was considered Fillory’s finest. She stared at the ceiling, almost wishing she’d left a candle lit so she could see anything at all. But then, the last time she’d fallen asleep with a candle lit was at Brakebills, and the ensuing house fire/lawn party had only been the most mediocre sort of fun, especially after campus security had arrived.

“Everything’s cocked up again,” she said, half-hoping that Fen was asleep and couldn’t hear her.

Fen rolled on her side. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

If Margo were anybody but herself, she’d feel embarrassed right about now. There was something wrong about this situation, asking for emotional support from someone she’d fucked over so badly. She kept her tone light when she replied. “It’s nothing. Just the usual turmoil of running a nation built on the volatile economy of magic.”

“Are Earth politics more straightforward?”

_Touche._ “Okay, so maybe it’s not the magic. Maybe it’s trying to rule a nation with other people in it.”

“I wish there was something I could do to help,” Fen said. 

“You’re sweet, but there’s not.”

A silence fell between them, and Margo remembered again how close together their bodies were. Fen’s eyes were only inches from hers. Margo could only focus on one of them at a time. She wondered what it would be like, to be soft and kind like Fen.

She wondered what it would be like to have someone that soft and kind taking care of her.

They couldn’t keep lying here staring at each other all night. Margo cast around for a subject of conversation, but the things she knew for sure about Fen could be confined to one of two categories: Her relationship with the Fairies, and her relationship with Eliot. Margo chose the latter. “What was it like to know you wouldn’t get to pick who you married?” she asked. “Did you ever feel trapped?”

Fen shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t lying against the mattress. “I wouldn’t have wanted to marry any of the men in my village,” she said. “It was nice to have an excuse not to.”

“But you had no idea what Eliot would even be like.”

“Arranged marriages aren’t uncommon here,” Fen said. “I just had to hope that he was better than the alternative. And at one point in my life, my being that close to the throne was a key part of at least one plan to take back Fillory.”

“Right, you were trying to retake the Kingdom,” Margo said. She’d known Fen was a part of that Foo Fighter Group, in a distant sort of way, but she’d never bothered to think about what that had meant for her life. “So tell me. Why did you stop?”

Fen seemed to think about this for a minute. Margo’s eyes were drawn to Fen’s hair, the way it fell around her shoulders. It wasn’t usually loose like this during the day, and for a moment she had to stop herself from reaching out to touch it. 

“It didn’t feel right,” Fen said finally. “Our plans were supposed to make life better for the people of Fillory, but we never worked out how to do that. Everyone had their own ideas, and if you tried to argue with them about things that wouldn’t work, they’d tell you that you weren’t really committed to the cause or you wouldn’t argue.”

Margo gave up resisting and reached out to run a finger through Fen’s hair. “So you married Eliot and resigned yourself to changing things from the inside.”

“I couldn’t see a better choice.” Fen’s voice came out half-defensive.

“I think it was brave.” Margo paused, thinking through her next words carefully. Fen’s hair had been softer than she was expecting, distractingly so. “You married Eliot without any idea of what would happen next or if your plans would work, because you knew you couldn’t live with the alternative.”

Fen nodded. “I know I’m not who you would have picked to be your wife,” she said. “But I hope this is something you can live with. I hope we can still have a good life together.”

The vulnerability in her voice made Margo reach out and grip her hand. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re not who I would have picked. But honestly? I could have done a whole lot worse than being married to you.”

*

A few weeks later, Margo took the carriage to a small town a few miles from Whitespire. She was supposed to give them an inspiring speech, to remind the humans that even though they hadn’t voted for her, she’d be a good ruler to them. The crowd contained only seven people and sixteen animals.

The people were not inspired. The animals clapped politely and then dispersed at once.

The crops, as she passed them on the way home, looked so dry that Margo thought a gust of wind might turn them to dust.

*

Margo stared out the window, letting the frigid air wash over her body. _I’m High Fucking King,_ she reminded herself, but it felt more like a story than anything real. She was a girl in charge of a mythical realm, and for all the power she had to change things she may as well have been at home on Earth partying.

“Are you awake?” Fen’s voice drifted softly from the direction of the bed. Margo didn’t turn to look at her.

“I’ll come back to bed in a minute.”

A few seconds later, she heard the sound of feet against the floor, coming closer until she could feel Fen’s body by her side. “It’s a cold night,” Fen said.

Margo just nodded. 

“Do you want to talk about whatever it is that’s bothering you?”

There were more stars outside the window than Margo had ever seen from Earth. “The crops are dying,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s just the ones that Julia magicked together or all of them, but it’s going to be a problem if it doesn’t get fixed.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Fen said.

“I know.”

Fen touched her shoulder. “I know you like to act like you have everything under control, but if you’re really okay, what are you doing here in the cold?”

“Fair point.” Margo took a deep breath. “I’m… reevaluating. I guess I always thought that I could do it perfectly. That when Eliot cocked it all up, that was just him being Eliot, but if I were High King things would be different. And now I know that’s not true, so I need a new plan of action.”

“Yeah,” Fen said. She didn’t turn away from the stars. “I used to think that too. Back when I was with Fillorians United.”

“I thought you guys didn’t believe in kings.”

“We didn’t. But we still believed in fixing things. Sometimes it seems like the stupidest thing in the world. But I don’t know, when I look back more closely I guess I feel like it was brave.” Fen turned to Margo and almost smiled. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re in charge now.”

“People are going to die if I can’t fix the crops.”

“I know.” 

Fen was looking at Margo more closely than Margo preferred to be looked at. It was like she could see through her skin, see past all of the confidence and “who gives a fuck anyway” and power and seeing straight to the mess underneath it all. Maybe it was because of this that instead of shutting down the conversation like she usually would, Margo said, “I’m not sure I can do it.”

“Then don’t worry about fixing everything at once,” Fen said. “Start with one thing. What’s one thing you can fix?”

Margo closed her eyes. Her breath came out shaky. “Every time I’ve ever tried to fix something I’ve ended up making it worse.” She didn’t know why she even had to say this, when she had been the one to trade away Fen’s baby to save Eliot. The wrongness of it all flooded over her.

“You know that’s not true.”

“Look, if you’re trying to pretend you forgive me to make me feel better, you don’t have to do that,” Margo said. She let her eyes flutter open. “You should go back to bed. I’ll be fine. I’ll be there in a minute, and tomorrow I’ll wake up and keep on being High King. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Fen put her hands around Margo’s waist and pulled her close, so their faces were only a few inches apart. Her gaze was piercing when she next spoke. “You’re right. I don’t forgive you. Not all the way, anyway. But I’m not going to bed until you tell me one thing you can fix.”

Margo cast around desperately, but answers seemed lightyears away. There were no more miracles. She couldn’t replant a whole forest, or stop an entire population from starving without crops, and as much as she wanted to invent the concept of indoor plumbing, it just wasn’t realistic. No matter how hard she tried to see a way out of this, only one thought circled in her mind: _I can’t do this alone._

She couldn’t do it alone, and she couldn’t swallow her pride and ask Eliot to come back, even though he’d be there in a heartbeat if he knew what she was going through. But maybe there was another option.

“Back when monarchies were still a thing on earth and had real power, the King’s wife was a Queen,” Margo said. She chose her words carefully. “Now, that didn’t always mean anything in terms having real power, but she mattered. I shouldn’t be the only one in charge. I need to be a partner. If I offered you that sort of position—”

“Of course,” Fen said. “I’d do it.”

“Really?” Margo asked. Relief flooded over her. She was shocked by how strong it was. “You’ll help me rule, it’s that easy?”

Fen nodded, a genuine smile forming on her face. “Margo, I’ve been waiting for this sort of political power since I was four years old. Of course I’ll help.”

In that moment, she was the most beautiful person Margo had ever seen. “Can I kiss you?” she asked, both surprised and unsurprised by the words as they came out of her mouth. She had never been one to ask permission, but something about Fen made her want to be sure. This was one relationship that she wasn’t willing to wreck. 

Fen’s eyes widened. “I’m your wife, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want you to say yes because I’m your wife because of some dumb contract that people who weren’t even us agreed to however many years ago.” Margo did her patented ‘I’m cute and irresistible and also if you fuck with my you’ll die’ face before continuing. “If you kiss me, it’d better be because you really fucking want to kiss me. Because I’m incredible, and if you’re not going to appreciate that then we should forget this whole thing.”

Fen’s lips were on hers almost before she’d finished the sentence.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @bisexual-meme-thief on tumblr. Come say hi!


End file.
